Burrell QL "Are "sleeping beauties" to be expected? " Scientometrics 65(3):381-389 December 2005.
Eugene Garfield
garfield at CODEX.CIS.UPENN.EDU
Wed Feb 1 16:21:28 EST 2006
E-mail Addresses: q.burrell at ibs.ac.im
Title: Are "sleeping beauties" to be expected?
Author(s): Burrell QL
Source: SCIENTOMETRICS 65 (3): 381-389 DEC 2005
Document Type: Article Language: English
Cited References: 13 Times Cited: 0
Abstract:
A paper that is little cited ('sleeps') for a long period of time and then
becomes much cited ('is awakened'), has been termed by van Raan (2004)
a 'Sleeping Beauty', or a paper that was 'ahead of its time'. The inference
is that the importance of the paper was not initially recognised, only
later was it (re)discovered. On the other hand, much theoretical work in
informetrics views the citation process as being purely random - modelled
by an appropriate stochastic process. From this point of view,
the 'awakening' could simply be a matter of chance without necessarily
saying anything about the worth of the paper. The question therefore arises
as to whether such awakenings can be explained or expected purely by the
random nature of the model or whether they are so unlikely that an
alternative explanation should be sought. In this note we express the
notion of a Sleeping Beauty in terms of a well-known stochastic model and
seek to answer this question, at least in general terms.
Addresses: Burrell QL (reprint author), Isle Man Int Business Sch, The
Nunnery,Old Castletown Rd, Douglas, Man IM2 1QB England
Isle Man Int Business Sch, Douglas, Man IM2 1QB England
E-mail Addresses: q.burrell at ibs.ac.im
Publisher: SPRINGER, VAN GODEWIJCKSTRAAT 30, 3311 GZ DORDRECHT, NETHERLANDS
Subject Category: COMPUTER SCIENCE, INTERDISCIPLINARY APPLICATIONS;
INFORMATION SCIENCE & LIBRARY SCIENCE
IDS Number: 971XN
ISSN: 0138-9130
EXCERPT - Concluding Remarks
So what has the foregoing analysis managed to demonstrate?
Firstly, that moderately aroused Sleeping Beauties might very well be
expected, assuming that the basic model and suggested parameter
values are appropriate in the context of the application. On the
other hand we have failed to demonstrate that outrageous Sleeping
Beauties - those lying dormant for a long period but then
bursting into hyperactive life! - might be expected. Why might that be?
The first reason is that the assumed parametric model is incorrect and we
would acknowledge that we have pushed it far beyond its originally proposed
purpose from a relatively small, well-defined, and homogeneous set of
papers to the very large multidisciplinary collection analysed by
van Raan. The other, and perhaps more intuitively satisfying,
obvious reason is that these examples are indeed special and in some
way "before their time".
In statistical parlance, these extreme examples would be termed outliers
and in a proper analysis they would not be excluded or ignored; rather one
would seek to explain their occurrence by going beyond the model. By this
we mean going back to the original data, identifying the actual source
in this case the cited paper and looking at the wider context to
see why this particular observation has occurred. This is what has been
done by GLÄNZEL et al. (2003).
Thus we would argue that informetrics/scientometrics is not just
a matter of mathematical/statistical modelling (or analysis) but should
always be directly addressed at a particular problem by taking full account
of its context.
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Sleeping Beauties in science
SCIENTOMETRICS 59 : 467 2004
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